20% boost in adolescent HPV vaccination rates

(ABC 6 news) – A Mayo Clinic study cited a 20% increase in human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates among adolescents through intervention-based approaches.

The boosting strategy involves mailing reminders to parents of their child’s eligibility for the HPV vaccine while also providing healthcare providers about successful HPV vaccine administrations to recently seen patients, according to Mayo Clinic.

The study involved 9,242 children due to receive at least one dose of the HPV vaccine. Parents would receive reminders or notifications in the mail and providers would simultaneously received feedback.

Of the patients studied, 40% of patients got their doses due in the months that followed the interventions, whereas 22% got their doses without the interventions.

The study suggests healthcare practitioners could adopt this technique to boost HPV vaccination in 11 and 12-year-olds.

“HPV vaccine uptake at 60% of eligible adolescents falls short of national public health goals and lags other adolescent vaccines,” says Robert Jacobson, M.D., a pediatrician in the Mayo Clinic Division of Community Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

According to Mayo Clinic, HPV causes “viral infections transmitted sexually through skin-to-skin contact.”

According to Mayo Clinic, HPV infections might occur in carriers without symptoms or signs in late adolescence or early adulthood. HPV affects both males and females. The virus can also lead to different forms of cancer such as “of the cervix, anus, genital area, mouth and throat.”

According to the CDC, of the 46,711 new cancer cases each year, about 37,000 of those are caused or related to HPV infections.